Oracle Blog

Mani Chandrasekaran's Weblog

Tuesday Jul 28, 2009

Just got the news, that I have cleared the requirements to become "The Open group - TOGAF (The Open group Architecture Framework) Certified Architect".

While, I am also a Sun Certified Enterprise Architect SCEA for Java EE 5, there were some significant differences between SCEA and TOGAF, in my view. SCEA is more focussed around technology and is Java and Java EE focussed, is certainly more intensive and multi step (you need to do a online quiz, assignment and an essay). TOGAF is more centred around Enterprise architecture, not just technology architecture and is also technology agnostic. I would say, there is a significant amount of learning and unlearning, to become a TOGAF practiioner. But, I am very happy today to be a part of the large family of TOGAF certified people. We can all talk in the same vocabulary and lingo

Friday Jul 24, 2009

A recent email invite to an "enterprise architecture summit" in Bangalore, kind of triggered a stream of thoughts on EA frameworks, and my experience with a few of them. I have used or am aware of a few EA frameworks, and having been at Sun, we also follow(ed) a framework. Well, I have listed the EA frameworks that I know about and my comments are (these are my personal comments, not Sun's. obviously, these are "tainted/biased" by the kind of work I do):

Zachman's framework - This is very popular, keep seeing plenty of training's and workshops being organized in India. I have looked at this, and it definitely is useful. But, I have a couple of points on this. First, its proprietary and second, it seems very laborious and very painful to document every single of the boxes in the Zachman's chart. Beyond, documenting "current state" of an EA, I am not too sure, it will help in the complete IT lifecycle. Of course, plenty of people are using it, and obviously see value in it.

TOGAF - The open group architecture framework - I am very impressed by TOGAF, and I love the way we can use TOGAF for its step by step approach, being an open standard, being mature and for its usefulness in the complete IT life-cycle. BTW, Sun is a platinum member of the TOGAF foundation.

Ultimately, in my view, the effectiveness of any EA framework, lies in practicing it and incorporating it in the corporate DNA of any company. There should be a buyin from the top management, they should be convinced about the effectiveness of using EA frameworks. All right then, Happy weekend.